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Recaptures of marked birds can be used to estimate their survival We suspect that the various methods of capture might not be equally suited for this purpose. In the long-term study of the great tit at our institute, recaptures were routinely made in three different ways: capture of parents feeding their young at the nest; capture of birds roosting in nest-boxes; mist-netting We analyzed 20 years of captures from the study site at the Hoge Veluwe to obtain estimates of adult survival and capture rates from captures obtained by each method. The three sets of estimates differ and our analyses suggest that the best method was the capture of breeding birds, while mist- netting was the least suitable. [KEYWORDS: Density]